Sony sued for 'misleading' gamers about Killzone's graphics

James 'DexX' Dominguez

“Video game company sued because their graphics were not as good as promised.”

It sounds like a joke, but for some it is very serious business indeed.

When Sony’s PlayStation 4 launched late in 2013, Killzone: Shadow Fall was the star of its day-one games line-up. It is a stunningly good-looking game, certainly one of the most graphically advanced ever released, and it was also one of the first to take full advantage of big full-HD televisions.

At least, that was the plan. A lawsuit, filed in California by a legal firm with a history of chasing up video game companies for allegedly broken promises, alleges Sony misled the public over the game’s graphical capabilities.

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Polygon reports that the basis of the legal argument is the term “1080p”. Referring to the resolution of a screen, it usually means an image that is 1920 pixels wide and 1080 high. This is the standard generally regarded as “full HD”, as opposed to plain HD, which is 1280 by 720 pixels. If an image is displayed at full HD without having to be stretched at all, it's often referred to as "native".

The previous generation of consoles, including the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, rarely displayed games in native full HD resolution. More common was 720p, and even lower resolutions were required for graphically taxing games, or those with fast-moving images.

The new generation heralded by the PlayStation 4 and its rival the Xbox One was meant to be the dawn of true high-definition gaming.

The lawsuit claims that while the less-demanding single-player portion of Shadow Fall ran in full native 1080p resolution, the faster-moving multiplayer portion used a technique called “temporal projection” to save system resources.

Effectively, the game was rendered 1080 pixels high, but only 960 pixel wide. This allowed the game’s graphical engine to render only half as many pixels, making the game run more smoothly.

Ordinarily, the narrower image being stretched to output at 1080p would create slightly blurrier images, but the game's developer Guerrilla Games claims on its blog that its technical trickery avoids this. It also claims that since the technique does not involve stretching, the image can still be thought of as native 1080p, but it acknowledges that under some definitions this is not true.

It might seem trivial semantics to some, but others — including Californian Douglas Ladore, in whose name the case was filed — clearly think this is a big deal.

The complaint, available in full online, alleges that “Sony claimed that the PS4 was so powerful that its featured Killzone video game could display '1080p' multiplayer graphics, a crowning achievement in the video game industry.

The full complaint runs to 29 pages, and demands damages in excess of US$5 million ($5.4 million). It suggests that such a large sum is reasonable because Sony benefited unfairly from the allegedly false advertising.

Power comparisons between the PS4 and Xbox One in the lead-up to their release have generally worked in Sony’s favour. Some cross-platform titles have been announced to be running in lower resolution on Microsoft’s console, leading to the general belief that the PS4 is more powerful.

If this class action suit can successfully argue that this perception is false, and that Sony gained advantage through false advertising, then it could cause a headache for Sony.

Users on the web forum Reddit, often a good barometer of where internet opinion lies, were largely supportive of the lawsuit. “This isn't about getting the money for the game back, it's about ensuring that companies won't and don't lie to us in their advertising claims,” one user said.